The original relational database systems came in response to a major new development in computing in the late 1960s. As systems got larger and more complex, it became clear that new and updated programs needed to work with data created by older ones. Existing systems made this difficult because programs often stored data each in their own way. The relational model standardized important aspects of storage and retrieval and those who adopted it enjoyed a range of benefits, including cheaper upgrades and reduced vendor lock-in.
Conversely, those who were still led by computer vendors into program-specific storage approaches endured higher maintenance costs and a larger effort late; particularly when what was sometimes a long-delayed decision to move to a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) platform was finally made. The years-long Australian Department of Defense project in the 1970s to finally move off the non-relational Honeywell FACT language is a testament to these costs.
From time to time since then, advancements in other areas of computing have made existing relational database tools incompatible or inconvenient. For example, the file-oriented nature of the early world wide web led many projects back to the inefficient times before the relational database until connecting of web pages to an RDBMS back-end was achieved and practiced. Similarly, the rise of object-oriented programming temporarily made it less natural for programmers to represent data using the relational data model. Data encapsulated in objects was difficult to break out into RDBMS tables. However, the advantages of relational representation were significant enough that now Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) is a common approach where object-oriented programming is still used.
On the other hand, distributed ledger technology (DLT) has the potential to ignite and enable what is tantamount to the information technology revolution of this century. Distributed ledger technology is tackling and solving one of the largest and most perplexing challenges of the Internet—the lack of trust. Distributed ledger technology is a nascent but powerful distributed computing paradigm and the only technology to date that has the potential to bring trust to the Internet by making data immutable for practical purposes. Unfortunately, existing RDBMS platforms and tools are not compatible with distributed ledger technology's constraints. As a result, program/data lock-in, wherein the data is inextricably linked to the program, is even greater for smart contracts on distributed ledgers than it was for programs in the pre-relational database days in the 1960s. Systems and methods are desired whereby data in distributed ledgers will only be locked into the particulars of a deployed smart contract if that was the specific intent of the developer.